


you'd like boys like me better

by SummerFrost



Series: Suitehearts [4]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bonding, Break Up, Gen, friendship lubricated with copious amounts of alcohol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:05:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: Nelly would buy Bitty, like, a lot of drinks.





	you'd like boys like me better

**Author's Note:**

> It's been an entire actual year since we posted anything in this 'verse but it _lives,_ lol.
> 
> Endless love to the #hellsquad as always <3
> 
> Title, also as always, from Fall Out Boy.

**June 2018**

“Hold my drink,” Bitty says, up against Nelly’s ear to be heard over the music. “That boy over there has to buy me a new one.”

Nelly grins, probably a little seedily but Bitty doesn’t seem to mind, and takes the martini glass that gets shoved in the general direction of his hand. He says, “Wait a sec,” though, catching Bitty halfway out of the booth.

Bitty raises an eyebrow, which means something like, _Seriously, Travis?_

Nelly likes how Bitty says it. _Travis._ It reminds him of Parse, except the accent is all wrong and Bitty usually says it more like he’s scolding him. Maybe it’s just the way Nelly gets to feel a little dirty, but like, in a good way.

“Take a selfie with me,” Nelly asks him, waggling his phone. Bitty starts to protest, and Nelly knows how that’ll go too— _we’re in a queer club, you promised no photos, Milo is making out with someone of indeterminate gender right behind you_ —so he heads it off by promising, “Just for Parse.”

That makes Bitty’s nose wrinkle up, but he pulls it together and slides into the booth. Nelly presses in closer, slinging an arm around Bitty’s shoulders and smooshing their faces together while he opens up Snapchat.

The pic comes out well, because duh. They’re both pretty hot. Bitty’s basically dressed to kill and somehow his hair still looks really good even though they’ve been here for over an hour and are a couple drinks in, and Nelly got a fresh shave on his undercut two days ago.

They look good _together,_ too, and Nelly tells Bitty, a little clumsily as he tries to make his voice loud enough with Bitty moving away, “You know, I’d buy you like _seven_ drinks.”

“Hun, you’re so easy that ain’t even a compliment,” Bitty drawls. The words are more of a feeling at this distance, but he leans back in to pat Nelly on the arm. “Be good.”

“Sounds fake,” Nelly shouts, realizing right after that it doesn’t really make any sense, but he’s pretty sure Bitty didn’t hear him anyway, so like, it’s fine. He settles for staring at Bitty’s ass while he saunters over to the guy at the bar, because damn.

Then he turns back to his phone and the in-progress snapchat, which he definitely saves to his gallery even though Bitty would kill him. But seriously, it’s a great picture and it’s not like anyone hacking his iPhone wouldn’t find _hella_ nudes that Bitty doesn’t know about, so really there are like bigger fish to fry or whatever.

He sends it to Parse without a caption.

Nelly watches the crowd after that, mostly because it’s too weird to try and crane his neck around and spy on Miley, and thinks about getting up to go dance. He could probably pick up tonight if he wanted to and the club is the right amount of packed for it—enough that he can dance and flirt and let himself drift around until he falls into the right orbit.

Parse snapchats him back from a bar in Vegas, bro-ed out with a snapback he stole from Benji last summer and a flannel, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He’s got a pretty girl under his arm, a hand out of frame somewhere, probably on her thigh. Nelly stares at the thin straps of her dress and thinks about Parse slipping them off of her shoulders and chubs up a little, shifting in his seat to lean into the friction. The caption asks, **Having fun?**

Parse always sets his snaps to infinity. Nelly grins and stares at the pic a little longer before he clicks it away, then sends a selfie of himself winking back: **Not as much as u.**

Bitty comes back before Parse answers again, flinging himself dramatically into the same side of the booth as Nelly and sighing.

Nelly hands him his drink back in way of condolences and he downs the whole thing in one swing even though he makes a face while he does it. He slams the glass back down on the table, which might be for effect or just from the alcohol, but Nelly doesn’t figure it out before Bitty’s asking, “What if I never fall in love again?”

“Oh, buddy, that’s a big mood,” Nelly says. His hands feel weirdly sweaty; he wipes them off on his jeans before he puts one on Bitty’s back and urges him out of the booth towards the bar. “We need better vodka.”

And a venue change, but they’ll get there. Nelly leans over and taps Miley on the shoulder as they walk past.

Miley looks over at him and shakes his head when Nelly jerks a thumb towards the exit, then dives back into kissing, his spine curving as he moves to press his lips against his partner’s ear and then catches their mouth.

At least someone Nelly came in with is having a good night.

They reach the bar and squeeze through the mass of bodies to lean against the counter, pressing up against each other mostly out of necessity and because Nelly likes to feel it, the relaxed muscle of someone else’s thigh and the sharp cut of hip. The club is crowded enough to be muggy and Nelly’s too tall for it, but he still kind of swears he can smell the mousse Bitty puts in his hair.

Nelly wonders, sometimes, how other people can walk around and not feel this much all the time. If he stole part of the buzzing under his skin from someone else.

He waves at a bartender, who holds up an apologetic index finger at him, and ducks down to put his mouth up near Bitty’s ear so he doesn’t have to shout as loud.

“Told ya I’d get you a drink.”

Bitty’s laugh sounds distorted, tangled up in the music. “And I told you I don’t fuck hockey players, hun.”

 _You almost married one,_ Nelly thinks, but that’d probably be a little mean. Instead he asks, “Even me?” in that tone that makes things seem kinda like a joke.

Bitty suppresses a laugh like he buys it and gives Nelly a once-over like he’s doing him a favor. He looks away, dark eyes fixed on the spot a drink would be in his hands, and says, “I don’t get it, this… thing with you and Parse.”

Nelly tries to shift away and catches his elbow on the guy behind him. He apologizes, stumbles back forward, and suddenly feels drunker than he did before. Like it was good, and now it’s a weight. “Uh, what?”

“Like,” Bitty says slowly, one word at a time and still to the bartop, “you’re boyfriends, right?”

“That’s, like, a little reductionist, but sure,” Nelly says, shrugging. The bar is dark wood and granite that sorta shimmers in the flashing lights. It’s pretty. Maybe that’s why Bitty won’t look at him.

“But you fuck _so_ many people,” Bitty insists, and, _oh._ Okay. “And he doesn’t care?”

Nelly stares at Bitty’s face and the way it isn’t changing. Cheerfully, he says, “Yep! I date, too. Just, you know, there’s not anyone right now.”

The bartender makes her way over, nodding at Nelly from down the bar.

 _“Why?”_ Bitty blurts, finally looking at him and so fucking, like, earnest about it. “Why would—”

“Hey, sorry,” Nelly tells the bartender. “Can I just get, like—a bottle of vodka? Top shelf.”

“What,” Bitty asks flatly.

The bartender makes a face. “Um, we don’t do bottle service.”

Nelly flashes his black AmEx at her and leans in a little, smiling. “Promise I’m good for it?”

The bartender looks down at the card and back up, biting at her lip, and says, “Um, I’m just—there’s no way to ring it up? I’m really not supposed to—”

“Travis, are we—”

“How many shots are in a bottle?” Nelly asks. He’s being pushier than normal, but like, he really wants to get out of here and it’s not like they can swing by a liquor store at one AM. “Like, twenty-two? Twenty-five? Can you just charge me that? It’s like, a to-go box.”

Bitty snorts next to him, which is fair.

The bartender’s eyes go a little wide, but she doesn’t answer him right away.

“I’ll tip you sixty percent,” Nelly offers. He feels like the smiling thing isn’t working, but it’d be weirder to stop. “And like, an autograph.”

Bitty snatches the card out of Nelly’s hand and hands it to the bartender himself. “He’ll do seventy if you don’t google the name on the card,” he counters sweetly, batting his eyelashes at her and pinching the skin right above Nelly’s hip. _Ow._

“Um—okay.” The bartender takes Nelly’s card and grabs them a bottle, sliding it across to Bitty hastily, who immediately shoves it at Nelly.

Nelly stuffs the bottle in his jacket and leans back against the bar top when the bartender hands him the bill. It takes a little extra time to calculate the tip because, you know, drunk, but when he looks up from signing the receipt, Bitty is staring at him.

“Did you just—” Bitty looks down at his phone and peers at the receipt again. “Did you do that in your _head?”_

Nelly shrugs, running a hand through his hair. How trashed does Bitty think he is? “Uh, yeah?”

He slides the receipt back over to the bartender while Bitty shakes his head at him, and then they book it for the exit.

The season’s changing so it’s not that bad waiting outside, even though it is raining. Nelly’s pretty used to that part by now, but Bitty glares up at the clouded night sky and huddles under the awning defiantly, clutching at his phone while he orders the Uber.

Nelly could pay for that, too, but he feels like Bitty probably doesn’t want him to.

The rain feels good on Nelly’s face but a little far away; he ordered a lot of shots earlier. Seattle looks really specific at night in a way he can’t really explain. He’s not sure he’d be able to recognize it in direct sunlight, but it’s like they built it to be pretty underwater.

The Uber pulls up and Nelly asks Bitty, “Why shouldn’t I?” as they climb inside.

“Hi,” Bitty tells the driver, bright and crisp like he didn’t also order a lot of shots earlier. “Do you like hockey?”

The Uber driver is an older woman with a nose ring. She makes a face in the rearview and says, “Uh, no?”

“Nevermind!” Bitty tells her, and then he turns to Nelly. “What?”

Nelly fumbles with his seatbelt. “I mean, like. You said it, earlier—I’m easy. Why should I—” The buckle finally clicks. He looks over at Bitty, backlit by the blurring lights of traffic. “I like it. Being the way I am.”

Bitty looks Nelly in the eye and then down again. He always acts so confident but he’s always looking at his hands like he’ll forget they’re there.

He wasn’t like that on the ice, when Nelly looked up his old NCAA games. Bitty’s eyes were always on the player who hit the hardest.

They pull up outside Nelly’s house and thank their driver. Nelly clutches the vodka bottle under his coat because it got a little slippery in the rain and unlocks the front door and wonders if Bitty didn’t answer him because he doesn’t like Nelly being the way he is. He thinks about asking, but then they couldn’t pretend.

“I can’t believe you bought an entire bottle,” Bitty says instead. He’s pushing past the dogs to get shot glasses from the kitchen while Nelly flops onto the couch and tries to open the vodka. “Like you don’t have enough in the house.”

“I mean.” Nelly shrugs and somehow the shrugging changes his grip on the bottle and the cap twists open. Sweet. “Special occasions and all.”

Nelly is taking up the entire couch, which is probably why Bitty sits down right on his torso. “I’m not having a crisis,” he tells Nelly’s vodka.

“Cool,” Nelly answers since the vodka can’t. “Me neither.”

Bitty takes the vodka and pours them each a shot right up to the brim.

“Except maybe you don’t like me,” Nelly tells him. “I guess that’s a crisis, since you have a key to my house.”

Bitty’s hand falters as he sets the bottle down. “Travis.” He hands Nelly a glass. They never even turned the lights on, but Nelly can find Bitty’s hand. “I _like_ you.”

“Oh.” Nelly slurps at his vodka. “Cool.”

“I just guess I—” Bitty stops, then does his shot, then sighs. _“Kent Parson_ is okay with—” he gestures at Nelly’s face and definitely knocks into Nelly’s glass, spilling it a little, but it’s fine. “With bein’ all free love or whatever?”

Nelly does his shot so it doesn’t spill more, and also so he can concentrate on the burn in his throat instead of the way his stomach feels weird. He also sits up a little, which shifts Bitty onto more of his lap region than his rib cage. They probably look really weird, sitting together in the dark with a vodka bottle and three whining dogs pawing at the couch, but Nelly’s not sure why he thinks that.

“You think you know him,” Nelly says, “because of Zimmermann. You don’t.”

“Well you don’t know _Jack,”_ Bitty snaps, and Nelly sorta snort laughs because puns, and also what the fuck. Bitty glares at him and says, “I heard it. We’re having a serious conversation, Travis, don’t ruin the moment.”

Nelly reaches for the vodka and pours them another round, dislodging Bitty so that just his legs are draped across Nelly now. They toast before they drink this time and then Nelly says, “Like, I know I don’t? But I do know he’s _just_ some dude with a nice ass, man, and not—you know, like, you and Parse act like he’s something on this pedestal or whatever.”

Bitty huffs out a laugh and wipes at the vodka on his lips with the back of his hand.

“I’m serious,” Nelly insists. The booze is catching up to him and the force behind his words carries him forward, back into Bitty’s space. “He’s like, actually a huge dick? And you can _definitely_ fall in love again if you loved him—and actually, if it’s a huge dick thing—”

Bitty shoves at Nelly’s face with a laugh. “Stop, oh my God! I know _way_ too much about your penis.”

Nelly lets the momentum carry him back against the pillows, grinning up at Bitty cheekily. “You haven’t seen it, so that’s actually, like, a lot less than most bros.”

“Ever heard of the allure of a li’l mystery?” Bitty chirps. He flops down onto the other end of the couch, tangling their legs up in the middle, and stares up at the ceiling in the sudden quiet.

Nelly closes his eyes and tries to imagine the rise and fall of Bitty’s chest, the specific way he breathes.

“I like you easy,” Bitty says softly. “I’m just…scared.”

Nelly wants to open his eyes and find Bitty looking at him. He keeps them closed and asks, “What even happened? With Zimmermann.”

Bitty shifts somehow, based on the rustling, but Nelly can’t tell how. He takes a while to answer, which is probably how he gets his voice so steady. “You know how sometimes, you’ve just got this big problem, and you’re pinnin’ ev’rythin’ on that? And you’re like, as soon as we fix that thing it’ll all be perfect, but then you fix that and you realize it was all the little stuff that made it bad and there’s--there’s just nothin’ left to do about that so you just kinda have to kill it?”

Yikes.

Nelly opens his eyes and says, “Uh, no?”

“Oh,” Bitty says. Nelly’s eyes have adjusted to the dark a little better, so he can see how Bitty’s face doesn’t have an expression at all. “Lucky you.”

“What was the big thing?” Nelly asks.

Bitty rolls onto his side and hugs a throw pillow to his chest. “He didn’t break my heart. I just wanna--we’re puttin’ that on the record.”

“Would you feel better if we cuddled?” Nelly offers. He’s a really good cuddler and that always makes Parse feel better. And Benji.

“No thanks,” Bitty says. He kicks his legs around like he’s trying to get comfortable, which nails Nelly in the shin a couple of times, but that’s okay. “Oh my God, I’m so drunk.”

Nelly frees one of his legs and hooks an ankle over Bitty’s thigh, then prompts, “So Zimmermann didn’t break your heart.”

“I guess it’s kinda like when someone dies?” Bitty says. He rolls onto his back again. “Oh my God, why’re we even--you’re not gonna, um, tell Parson about this, right?”

“There’s a lot of things happening here and I’m totes drunk,” Nelly says. “But like, firstly? Nah, I can keep secrets. Pinky swear. And also, like--saying something’s like dying is definitely super chill and not serious at all.”

“I just mean, um, like? It wasn’t his fault, and I guess I’m mad about it but not, um.” Bitty pauses, dragging his teeth over his bottom lip. “I shouldn’t be mad at him, exactly, just, sad that it wasn’t...what I wanted, in the end?”

“Yeah, yeah, I--” Nelly sits up a little and runs a hand through his hair. “You, like, wanted what it was supposed to be, but?”

Bitty finishes softly, “But it couldn’t be that.” His eyes look a little wet, but it could just be the weird light. “Can we stop talking about it now?”

Nelly reaches for the vodka.

 

~*~

 

The next morning, Nelly knocks on the door of the spare bedroom that Bitty’s unofficially-officially claimed as his and asks, “You up, bud?”

A vaguely human sound comes from the other side, which really only _kind of_ answers the question. But then Nelly hears the thump of feet hitting the floor and a handful of seconds later, Bitty opens the door and says, “Turns out fancy vodka doesn’t make you less hungover.”

Nelly laughs. “Fact, yeah. So, like, rally for brunch though?”

“Oh my God.” Bitty rests his forehead against the doorframe and winces. He slept in all his clothes, if the tragically rumpled collar is anything to go by. “If I get within ten feet of a mimosa I’ll die, no thank you.”

“Are you sure?” Nelly asks. He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through his camera roll. “‘Cause we’re going to Etouffe and the chef is--”

Bitty puts a hand up to stop him. “Travis, we’ve discussed how _entirely_ gross your taste in men is.”

“This is different,” Nelly insists. He tries to flash a picture they took at the restaurant a few months ago, but Bitty walks away from him. “He’s, like, totally your type, bro.”

“You don’t know my type,” Bitty shoots back. He makes it halfway down the stairs and then turns around. “Shit. Where’s my other sock?”

Oh, so that’s what Stanley was chewing on earlier. Whoops.

“No idea,” Nelly says. “I’ll lend you a pair if you come to brunch.”

Bitty pulls the other sock off his foot and chucks it in Nelly’s direction. “It’s a hard pass, hun. I’ll see you Monday.”

Nelly concedes, locking his phone and poking at the sock with his foot. “Okay, whatevs.”

Bitty looks up at him from where he’s putting his shoes on, sockless, and suddenly he looks less like he’s trying to verbally murder Nelly and a little more like he’s really, really tired. He bites his lip and glances to the side.

“Um,” he says. “Thanks? For listening last night?”

Sometimes Nelly feels a little bad about that time he punched Jack Zimmermann in the face. Sometimes he doesn’t.

Nelly puts his hands in his pockets and says, “Duh. We’re bros. If you ever need--”

“Bye, Travis.” Bitty slips out the front door before the dogs can follow him.

Benji whines and paws at the door. Nelly heads down the stairs, caps the vodka bottle from last night, and carries their shot glasses into the kitchen.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm most active on [my Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/summerfrost) these days, but I do also still have [Tumblr!](https://www.yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com)
> 
> If you want more of Nelly&pals, check out [the OMGCP Suitehearts blog!](https://omgcp-suitehearts.tumblr.com/)


End file.
